As bad as it gets sometimes, only rarely do journalism and punditry sink to this level of hysterical foolishness:
Mike Lupica chimed in with this:
Lupica: AR-15 is the rifle for the 'sport' of hunting humans
They call semiautomatics like this sport rifles. You bet. Mostly for the sport of killing innocent people, and killing them fast.
It turns out that reports of the shooter using an AR-15 style rifle were false. According to the FBI he used a shotgun and then took a pistol off of a security officer he shot. There's now a note above Lupica's rant explaining that he wrote it when "reputable law enforcement sources" were saying the shooter used an AR-15. Maybe, but I bet those weren't "official" law enforcement officials who were authorized to speak to the media.
Everybody knows that initial reports are almost always wrong to one extent or another. The prudent thing to do before jumping in with both feet would be to wait for official confirmation. But journalistic malpractice comes easy to close-minded people who are eager to push their agenda. I might cut them some slack if they didn't have a history of deceiving their readers on multiple occasions.
And to Lupica's point, estimates vary widely, but there are millions of AR-15s or similar variants in the hands of the US public. According to the FBI, in 2012 all rifles combined(meaning tens of millions more) accounted for 322 murders out of 12,765.
"Mostly for the sport of killing innocent people, and killing them fast," eh? No, not even close.
I'm open to listening to gun control advocates who sincerely want to examine options for helping to end, or at least reduce the likelihood of mass shootings. But people like Lupica and his editors actually lesson the chance of finding common ground when they spew out this sort of ignorance and vitriol.
More: CNN tries to match them with this:
The AR-15 is a semi-automatic rifle, which is vastly different than a shotgun. I've said this before and I'll say it again: If you want to have anything you say in the gun debate dismissed out of hand, make an egregious mistake like the one pictured above and then compound it by refusing to understand why it matters.
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